Wingin' it

They say that the design of a formula one car starts at the front wing, because the leading edge of the front wing is the only part of the car that sometimes will get clean air. I'm starting with the front wing, as it seems so important the design of the rest of the car. It will determine how the nose interacts with the wing the monocoque, etc.

So here we have the first screen shots with my new setup:


Not bad


Somehow after staring at this for way too long, it just doesn't look like an exact match.


I got a bit frustrated by the difficulty modifying my design.

That got me thinking...how would a real F1 designer design a front wing?

Starting at the beginning, what is a wing? Technical term is an airfoil (aerofoil). Lots of research has been done on airfoils, and there are lots of shapes. One way to describe an airfoil is to use NACA airfoil terminology.

wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_airfoil

Here is a very nice concise illustration: http://simul-x.com/reference/wing_element.html

So, to sum up quite a bit of research, I should be able to use a airfoil point generator to make a table of points in a plane, import that table to CAD software, project a spline through those points and have a front wing profile.

Here is a list of airfoil generators I'm going to try:

NVFoil: http://shareware.pcmag.com/free/Engineering/nvf101zip/28660.html
Profili2: http://www.profili2.com/eng/default.htm
Compufoil: http://www.compufoil.com/index.shtml
Javafoil: http://www.mh-aerotools.de/airfoils/jf_applet.htm
Winfoil: http://www.winfoil.com/default.htm
Wingmaster 4.0: http://www.upperspace.com/downloads/trial/
Foils 4.0: http://www.yoredale.uklinux.net/modelfly/foils.htm
Wing Designer Plus 6.5: http://users.skynet.be/znline/clement/wing.htm
Designfoil: http://www.dreesecode.com/


Hopefully I'll have a nice airfoil soon!

Time: 242h